Abstract:
This research work examines the impact of corrective feedback (CF) on the writings of business communication students in selected tertiary institutions in Ghana. In Ghana, CF is one area in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) that has not received much attention. Both empirical and theoretical literature were reviewed. Noticing and Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypotheses were the two theoretical underpinnings the research adopted. The design of the research was sequential exploratory mixed methods approach. The field data (students’ texts and questionnaire items) were collected from Ho, Koforidua, Kumasi, and Sunyani Technical Universities. From each of the universities, the respondents were segmented into three groupings – Direct Feedback (DF), Indirect Feedback (IF), and No Feedback (NF) groups. One hundred (100) student-respondents were targeted from each of the 4 universities, but a 60 percent response rate each was attained. Each student-participant composed 4 texts before the questionnaires were administered. A total of 1280 sampled texts were used. After the pre-tests were conducted at each university sequentially, three interventions (DF, IF, and NF) were used on the pre-test texts of the various groups of the student-respondents before they took the post-tests. The result of the study showed that CF in general has positive impact on students’ texts. The research further revealed that DF and IF interventions correct memorandum and business letter errors better than the NF. However, the potency of the DF intervention was stronger than that of the IF. Therefore, the thesis recommends that teachers of Business Communication should use DF or IF interventions in assessing students’ texts; and NF should only be used as a prelude of DF or IF.
